Kentucky's new AD will have two titles: CEO of Champions Blue LLC and Athletic Director

It’s been almost three months since news broke that Mitch Barnhart is retiring as Kentucky’s athletic director, effective June 30. Today, we found out that his successor won’t have just one title, but two, to reflect the changing landscape of college sports.

University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto announced this morning that the new leader of UK Athletics will be both the Chief Executive Officer of Champions Blue, LLC and Athletics Director. Champions Blue is the holding company that the department moved to last year to give itself more flexibility and ability to generate revenue. The CEO and Athletics Director will report directly to the UK President and work closely with other university units, such as Student Success, Information and Technology Services, Marketing and Strategic Communication, and Philanthropy, to achieve unit and institutional goals.

“College athletics is always changing, but that change now is occurring more rapidly and with greater financial impacts than ever before,” Capilouto said in a press release. “The leadership role must change and adapt as well. Putting the success of our students first remains a priority. Winning championships remains critically important — but, so too, is the financial and commercial acumen to generate more revenue,  manage expenses more tightly and align even more with our institutional mission to advance the state.”

Since Barnhart’s retirement announcement, Capilouto has interviewed over 80 people about the role, including coaches and senior staff at UK, as well as donors, supporters, and leaders in the business of sports across the country. With that listening tour now complete, Capilouto says he is looking at both sitting college athletic directors and people with varied backgrounds in pro sports and business as candidates to have a successor in place by June 30, Barnhart’s last day. One month ago, KSR+’s Justin Rowland reported that Boise State athletic director Jeremiah Dickey was a candidate, the only external name we’ve heard mentioned for the role so far.

You can see the complete job description for the Chief Executive Officer of Champions Blue, LLC, and Athletics Director on UK’s website. Capilouto says the ability to adapt to the rapidly changing college sports landscape is paramount, along with these chief attributes:

• A commitment to student success, integrity, compliance and the pursuit of championships
• Financial and commercial acumen to administer larger budgets, generate more revenue and manage expenses
• A capacity to analyze costs and consequences of alternative revenue strategies
• Demonstrated skills in leading the development of a successful approach to athlete compensation, revenue sharing and NIL opportunities, working closely with the institution’s multi-media rights partner, JMI Sports.
• An ability to effectively communicate in a complex media environment as well as with other critical constituencies, such as donors, fans, the UK Board of Trustees and Champions Blue Board of Governors.
• A willingness to work collaboratively with a team of leaders, utilizing shared services across the UK enterprise to achieve unit and strategic goals

Earlier this month, Capilouto updated the Champions Blue Board of Governors on the search, presenting a series of organizational models. One was splitting the AD role into two jobs, with one person focusing on the business side (fundraising and managing money) and the other on the athletics side (hiring and managing coaches, traditional AD duties). Today’s announcement signals that Capilouto has chosen to find one person for both roles. For what it’s worth, here is the slide from that meeting outlining options for the one-person model:

“UK Athletics has long played a critical role in defining for so many people what the University of Kentucky is for the Commonwealth of Kentucky,” Capilouto said. “For that to be true long into the future, we must have a leader who can cast a vision and also execute on it – a vision for how we continue to win championships, develop and educate young people and also successfully run what is increasingly a significant business. That leader is out there, ready to join one of the nation’s premier athletics programs and universities. We are excited about the prospect of the right leader, at a point of inflection and change, joining an institution with undeniable momentum in meeting our mission of advancing this state in all that we do.”

With the job description now officially in place, the search for the next leader of the University of Kentucky athletics is on.